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Criminal charges against former Ottawa Police Association president Matt Skof were withdrawn on Friday as his defence lawyers reached a plea deal that included a suspended sentence with 12 months of probation after Skof pleaded guilty to a lesser provincial offence.

Skof, 51, was charged five years ago with breach of trust and obstruction related to leaked recordings of phone calls with a civilian where Skof disclosed details of an undercover homicide investigation.

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Prosecutor Jason A. Nicol told the court the Crown’s office had “re-evaluated” the prospect of proceeding with a criminal trial, and those charges were formally withdrawn Friday as Skof pleaded guilty to the provincial offence of disclosing personal information in contravention of the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act of Ontario.

Skof’s defence team of Connie D’Angelo and Michael Edelson said Skof made a charitable donation to CHEO of $5,000 — the same amount he could have been fined for the MFIPPA violation, which is not a criminal offence and has no provision for any jail term.

The conditions of his suspended sentence include one year of probation where he is not allowed to commit any “similar or related” offence, must appear before the court when required and must notify the court of any change in address.

The provincial offence was added to Skof’s court file in January after a potential criminal trial was postponed in October.

Skof was first charged with breach of trust and obstruction in January 2019 following a six-month OPP investigation — initiated by a chief’s complaint lodged by former police chief Charles Bordeleau — into the leaked audio tapes, which surfaced on social media in the summer of 2018.

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According to the agreed statement of facts filed to support the guilty plea on Friday, Skof disclosed information about an ongoing homicide cold case, including details related to an undercover operation, during phone conversations with the civilian from July to September 2017.

Skof was aware that the information he disclosed was “confidential and sensitive,” according to the agreed facts, though he was not aware that the woman was recording the phone calls.

The recordings, with the audio edited to include only Skof’s voice, were later leaked on social media and on the LiveLeak.com website by Paul Manning, a Hamilton police officer on extended leave with an “extensive” social-media presence focused on policing issues and alleged corruption. The recordings have since been removed from the public domain.

Before he divulged details of the undercover operation, according to the agreed facts, Skof told the woman she had to take the secret “to the grave.”

“OK, so you ready? Sit down,” Skof told her in one call cited in court Friday. “You are in the f—ing deep dark here. OK, do not get caught. You can’t make inquiries…”

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When the woman asked Skof if he was recording the call himself, he responded: “I just f—ing gave you something that I could probably go to jail for.”

He also stated, “You have as much s— on me as I f—ing have on you.”

Some details he shared of the undercover operation were accurate and some were not, according to the agreed facts. The undercover operation into a still-unsolved homicide was called off for unrelated reasons in 2017, before the leak.

The woman alerted Bordeleau in June 2018, and eventually provided Ontario Provincial Police investigators with 16 unedited phone conversations with Skof.

Ontario Court Justice Robert Wadden accepted Skof’s guilty plea Friday along with the joint submission on sentencing from the Crown and defence.

“This is not a case where information was disclosed to a criminal element … (The woman) was someone with whom Mr. Skof had a professional relationship with and had worked on various policing-related endeavours,” D’Angelo said.

The guilty plea was a “significant mitigating factor” in the suspended sentence, D’Angelo said, “and is also a reflection of (Skof’s) deep remorse and regret for what happened.”

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D’Angelo called it a “fair and appropriate” sentence as the resolution spared court resources and the expense of a trial that would have called civilian and police witnesses to testify.

The plea and resolution concludes a lengthy journey through the court system from the time of Skof’s arrest on Jan. 23, 2019, and through numerous delays related to the court backlog during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown.

Nicol said the Crown’s office held “extensive resolution discussions” with the defence that included “thousands of pages of submissions” before reaching an agreement on the plea.

The breach of trust charge would only apply to an official who held a public office, Nicol explained, and, while police officers qualify under that section of the Criminal Code, there was an issue of whether Skof was acting as a police officer at the time of the allegation, when he was OPA president and was not on active duty.

The Crown would have been required to prove intent to reach a conviction on the criminal obstruction charge, and Nicol said there was a lack of “definitive” legal precedent to support the Crown’s case.

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Skof became president of the Ottawa Police Association in 2011 and was supported by the rank-and-file union as he stayed on as president after the criminal charges were laid. Skof resigned as the union’s president and retired as a police officer in April 2022.

His retirement was in part prompted by the criminal investigation, D’Angelo told the court, and he left the police service before he was eligible to collect a full pension.

A $500,000 lawsuit Skof launched against Bordeleau and the Ottawa Police Services Board was dismissed on consent last year.

D’Angelo told the court Skof wished to “move on from the matter.” He now works as a labour consultant.

ahelmer@postmedia.com

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